


All That Remains

by cosmicallybrownie



Category: Satan and Me, Satan and Me (Webcomic)
Genre: Blood, Graphic descriptions, One Shot, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7689949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallybrownie/pseuds/cosmicallybrownie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael’s interactions with the Horsemen were always ugly. They were the harbingers of the end, quick to usher in chaos and enduring suffering. They haunted the earth Michael was swore to protect, and he never won.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Remains

He was never sure what he hated more: seeing countries fight that were once comrades or the suffering of its people. The heavy look in a mother’s eyes as she sent another child off to never come back. The breaking heart of the doctors whose hands could never work fast enough to silence all the groans of the men whose spirits bled dry faster than their bodies. The anger that burned in the belly of each country coiled around her lands and squeezed, causing her citizens to choke under the weight of the crushing war. The citizens lost battles and never knew what they were fighting for. The king never paid the price. His toll was paid by his thousand soldiers who all had wives and children. Cries rang out in the night for fathers that had been forced to flee from the earth in a deadly mixture of blood and steel. Hatred burned in the eyes of the kings who were once brothers, and Michael knew God never put it there.

 

It was a Holy War, they claimed. Michael would like to rip the fingernails out of the man he knew was behind the name. The Crusades were anything but holy. Men fought and died and bled for nothing but a piece of land. Splendor awaited them in heaven with endless space and perfection, but they were focused on the here, the now. Michael walked among the broken corpses of the aftermath. Once shining armor a solider thought would protect him was torn open and stained crimson with his own blood. Their vitality ran from their fingertips and eyes, pooling in their mouths and in the crevices of metal.

A man’s body lay, cleaved open and exposed like a cow at the slaughter, and Michael felt an ache in his own ribs. The delicate arrangement of bone and organ spilled onto the ground and was left for the crows to pick at. The angel’s knees trembled. It was a waste, such a bloody waste. God planned every cell, every tissue, organ and bone so deliberately. The bones curved carefully to protect the precious organs, but nothing could protect against war.

* * *

 

As long as there has been life, there has been death. Life is endlessly beautiful, but in the end, always defeated. The inevitability of it does not sting or ache; the old woman knows she has lived her fullest. Her chest is filled to the brim with experience and love, but she’s tired. She’s so tired, and Michael holds her hand when death comes, swift and never lingering. Death is a resident in the hospital, curving its cold hands around the necks of patients and making them let go. Death in due time does not bother him.

But death comes to a child. A small girl lays, folded in on herself. Cancer has taken everything but her name from her frail hands, and she’s lived her whole life without feeling beautiful. The stunning angel is a welcome sight in her room, and she almost weeps at seeing such beauty. Michael sits on the edge of her bed and takes her hand to stop his own from shaking. Death slinks in, ready to steal the last thing the girl has, and Michael can’t protect her from this. Her hand is small and open in his, and he weeps into her palm when death exits as swiftly as it came.

* * *

 

Bodies lined the streets. Crumpled heaps of blankets and clothing, and he was never sure if it was a person or a lump of fabric long abandoned. Flies and rats and waste filled every crevice in the city. Moans and cries rolled across the streets but the pestilence still crept through the alleys like a poison, destroying all it touched. It slunk in through windows, wiping out a family as easy as the breeze. Carts full of children were pushed through the town to burn together. Victims of the plague littered the streets, the broken figures all belonging to mothers who had blood around their mouths and a tremble in their bones. The plague was blacker than a moonless night.

Michael never felt more powerless than when faced with helpless sufferers of pestilence’s black wrath. Men shrunk to the size of children clawed at his robe as he sifted through the bodies. There was no cure but to wait and watch as the overcrowded streets emptied as less and less bodies burned each day. There was no one left to tend the fires. Everywhere he looked, broken bodies greeted him. Soot and ash burned in his throat as Michael heaved the shovelfuls of coal onto the pyre. His prayers tasted like smoke in his mouth.

* * *

 

The hungry mouths of children split open in cries. Their stomachs ached with emptiness and their skin stretched gaunt over their bones. Michael was forced to watch the children wither and cry for food that never came. Crumbs were bargained for like gold and twice as desired. Once beautiful bodies collapsed on themselves. If the child was crying the night before, they would wake in the morning, granting another chance, another day to end the empty torture. But parents feared the eventual night, and it always came, the night when a hungry child went to sleep silently. They slipped away when their small body could no longer find the strength to open their eyes. Bone deep weariness wore the mother and father into blunt objects barely able to stand, and suddenly he understood why they called it a depression.

Children sat in the streets, and their hands shook when they held them out to people who passed by. Michael pressed warm coins in their hands, but what good was money when the baker had nothing to sell? Families were gorged on depression and excuse. “Never enough” rang in the halls of every home. Famine tore through the body and life of all who lived, leaving behind shells and emptiness. The starved souls of the children begged God every night for the fish and loaves to multiply. They begged for a miracle. But eventually, every child stopped praying and went to bed one night silent.

* * *

 

The horsemen were set to return with the encroaching annihilation of all God had created. The pure intentions of his creations had been long tainted. Sin was no longer as plain as a snake coiled in the garden. Sin hid in plain sight, manifesting in every facet of society. It hid in the smile of a man who bought and sold corruption, his forked tongue hid in a silver casing, and played the strings of persuasion. In the anger of a woman that militarized her mouth and used her words as weapons worse than her hands. The dark sin festered low in the gut of the politician, cruel plans hidden under well-tailored suits and poorly fitting sheep skin. Much too often sin hid in the cracks, disguised as gentleness and well-meaning concern. The desire to see the fat faces of the bloated beneficiaries withered down by the hollowed fingers of famine ached as a vicious justice that Michael longed to see. He longed for the Four to only prey on those who stood on the backs of others.

They did not discriminate. Their expressions sat flat on their face as they touched whom they pleased, like a child trailing their fingers along a shelf of toys. One by one the porcelain dolls fell to the floor, broken and left to deteriorate. Hell razed a path that the horsemen were happy to follow and Michael stood behind and watched them go. He fell to his knees, picking up the broken glass, piece by piece. Cradling shards of the shattered plans in his hands, the protector held them so tight his hands shook. Even though they bit into his skin and scarred him, Michael couldn’t let them go. The ruined relics were all he had left of his father’s creation.

He didn’t want to be all that remained.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> This fic and all others can be found on my tumblr account under my writing tag  
> cosmicallybrownie.tumblr.com/tagged/hot-off-the-presses


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